It’s time to either completely dry up Picnic Day in the city of Davis or shut it down. Zero tolerance for alcohol on campus and imposing martial law downtown this year was like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall; the revelers simply spilled out into the neighborhoods.

This year the bars really weren’t the problem. They opened later and, unlike other venues, they have to limit access and control behavior. But we’re never going to get ahead of this thing as long as Safeway sells ping pong balls in the liquor aisle. I wonder what the suits at the corporate office would think of that if they were aware of the discussions we’re having in this town.

This year there were hundreds of drunken revelers roaming Sycamore Lane, Anderson Road and streets in between. One enterprising student organized a block party on Harvard Drive, only to be overwhelmed when a crowd so large it filled the street shoulder to shoulder along the entire block showed up.

Word on the street is when the police came to break up the party, the host actually produced a permit. Someone at City Hall gave a permit to a sophomore to throw a block party in a residential neighborhood on Picnic Day. Really?

And I still have not seen any reports as to what all this extra law enforcement costs and how we pay for it.

Gone are the days when state law forbade selling liquor in college towns and you had to drive to El Macero or Woodland to purchase a bottle of booze, but if we can’t put an end to Picnic Day being all about the drinking once and for all, then it’s time for it to go, too.

Bruce Hupe

Davis

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